


so silent and so bold

by Caramelized



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Angst, Character Study, F/M, Lots of Angst Actually, does not much resemble the canon romance, felix at his angry snarly emotionally constipated best, just the romance thanks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-06
Updated: 2019-08-06
Packaged: 2020-08-10 09:23:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,070
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20133127
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Caramelized/pseuds/Caramelized
Summary: Byleth is curious when a student makes a pass at Felix. He's clearly uninterested, yet he lets the girl take him to her room... Why?Five years later, she finds out.NOTE: Not a massively comprehensive or detailed fic here but key events on the Blue Lions route are spoiled.This work has been translated intoChinese, with thanks toShiriasu





	so silent and so bold

Byleth was sitting on the roof of her dormitory--she'd hung a rope ladder down the back wall and it was a good spot, private but only a few feet from her room, so she remained in earshot if one of her many, many visitors had a real emergency--grading papers and facing the training hall. Felix slunk through the double doors, loose and liquid as ever, the only evidence of an afternoon spent training the shards of sweat-slick hair plastered to his neck and brow.

A student Byleth didn't recognize intercepted him. She spoke animatedly, reached out and touched his arm. He shifted away, a half-hearted dodge, but the young woman took a firm grip on his bicep and squeezed. Felix remained impassive, slightly annoyed. His standard expression. The girl stepped closer. The squeeze turned into a caress. A few minutes later, she dragged an unresisting but unenthusiastic Felix to her room.

_Huh_, Byleth thought. A few hours later, she crossed paths with Felix on his way into the bathhouse while she was on her way out. He looked the same as he had before. No change at all.

_Huh_.

***

The same thing happened again, only a few weeks later. At dinner. Felix stood up from his seat in the dining hall, bussed his tableware, and a different girl intercepted him at the door. She hooked her elbow around his and led him away. He dragged his feet, eliciting a sharp yank and a teasing laugh from the girl.

Did Felix want to go with her or not? Byleth couldn't tell. He looked back once, but she stood in the light and he in the shadowed terrace beyond, so she couldn't make out his expression.

The next morning, Felix arrived at the training hall with bloodshot eyes. He was a little slower than usual and furious about it. Felix being Felix, however, he was still faster than everyone else. And anger made him cruel. He sent Cyril _and_ Leonie to the infirmary before the morning session ended.

Felix had no problem speaking his mind. He'd tell absolutely anyone exactly what he thought, no matter how much it hurt. Byleth couldn't think of a single person better equipped to deliver a stinging rejection to unwanted advances. It followed that if he made no rejection, he wanted the advances.

But something didn't sit right. If he were anyone else, she'd have pulled him aside for a chat. Taken his temperature, as it were. But Felix? Just the thought made her laugh. He really wasn't hard to talk to. Get to the point quickly, leave emotion out of it, and he'd engage. But ask him about his feelings and--with the sole exception of his feelings about Dimitri, which were always boiling away inside the pressure-cooker of his heart--pulling teeth would be easier. 

No, she'd have to take a different tack. 

***

An opportunity presented itself soon enough. She was on her way back to her room from an after-dinner vigil in the cathedral with Ashe, who was nearly incoherent with grief and confusion and needed company more than anything, when she interrupted Felix and a nun. A _nun_! Still wearing her habit! She had one arm hooked around Felix's back and a hand down his pants while he just... stood there. Passively.

Felix was _never_ passive. He was motion itself, all action and focus and unstoppable intensity. What was going on? 

"Sorry I'm late," Byleth chirped. "Did you still want to train or did I miss out?" 

She was not late. They had not made an appointment to train late at night, in the dark, after a heavy dinner. But if Felix wanted an out, he'd have it. And if he didn't, she'd continue on her way. 

The nun jumped clear of Felix with an embarrassed squeak but she did _not_ leave. Felix held Byleth's gaze as he tucked his shirt and buttoned his trousers. The sharp, stinging mockery in his glare would have made her flinch if she hadn't been prepared for his reaction... but she _had_ been prepared and so her expression of friendly good cheer didn't crack.

Felix was not the most complex man she'd ever met. An uncharitable person might call him predictable.

"Train," he said finally, low and flat. 

"Great. Give me a minute to warm up." Byleth glanced at the moon, hanging low in the eastern sky. "I have about an hour." 

She assumed he'd take the opportunity to hang back, make his excuses, but he ignored the nun and followed Byleth inside. The rudeness of it took her breath away but then... well, maybe he had his reasons? With Felix it could go either way.

Byleth spent a few minutes warming up, exactly as she'd said she would. Felix paced a circuit around the shadowed colonnade, which made it hard to relax. He wanted to run but, being incapable of it, would always strike instead. And she was the only target in reach. Resigned, she took up a training sword and fell into an easy guard stance, gesturing him onto the sand. 

"Aren't you going to say anything?" he demanded. 

"I hadn't planned on it," answered Byleth, in her blandest tone. She'd been told, repeatedly, that she was a champion at _bland_. 

"_Nothing_," he sneered. 

"Did you want to train or not?" Byleth asked. 

After a brief hesitation, his shoulders dropped and loosened into graceful, fluid readiness. "Train." 

***

After Byleth interrupted Felix mid-grope two more times during the following month, she began to suspect that she'd been duped. Felix had wanted extra training and tricked her into presenting it as her own idea. Horny teenagers could be terribly oblivious and, so long as they were all confined to this monastery, a few awkward moments were inevitable. But twice in a month? Even _Sylvain_ was more discreet. 

When she found Felix tucked between the reservoir and the greenhouse, half-hidden by shrubbery while a sleek and lethal-looking woman pawed enthusiastically under his clothes, Byleth decided she'd had enough. Felix did not need to be saved. He was fine. She'd been inadvertently promoting public indecency and it had to stop. 

She lingered, waiting for Felix to see her so she could pointedly walk away. He looked bored, maybe a bit sleepy... Even so, he ought to have noticed her by now.

It dawned on Byleth that Felix had _excellent_ spatial awareness. Eerie, unnaturally excellent spatial awareness. He knew _exactly_ where she was. He must have known from the first, when she'd been sitting atop the dormitory grading papers.

Whatever was happening here, it was... wrong. A little sick, honestly.

Byleth walked away. When it happened again a few days later, she did the same. She'd figured out the game and she would not play. 

***

The odd, uncomfortable PDA came to an abrupt halt. Felix, still not much of a talker, expressed his feelings in the only way he could: by attacking her savagely during training.

Byleth had her strengths and she'd grown confident in her tactical acumen, but Felix was better with a sword. That was a fact and most of the time, like a good professor, she was proud of him. Every time one of her students surpassed her, she knew she'd done her job. Ashe with his bow, Ingrid's increasingly deft flying... as far as she was concerned, their success was her success.

So Felix could beat her in an even match. Not every time, but often enough. And when he really focused? There was no contest. He could have her where he wanted her in seconds. On her back, overextended with the tip of his wooden blade at her throat, stumbling onto one knee while he slapped her sword out of her hand and jeered. It got embarrassing and set the other students on edge but, as ever, Byleth kept her cool. Which made Felix angrier. Eventually, he hit her so hard in a sparring match that he cracked her skull and she had to be carried away on a stretcher. Manuela patched her up and insisted on a week of bedrest.

Felix visited her in the infirmary. He didn't apologize, not that she'd expected him to. Fighting with wooden swords was safer than fighting with steel, but that didn't make it _safe_. People were injured in training matches all the time. He hadn't done anything wrong... except that he had and they both knew it. Felix sat on the empty bed next to hers, stared out the window for ten minutes, and left without a word. 

***

They were only alone once after that, very briefly after the White Heron Cup. Felix told her she was a good dancer, appeared satisfied with himself, and went on his way. The memory would have lingered--far too pleasantly--except that a week later her father died, and then Edelgard started a war, and Byleth lost five years.

When she woke up, everything had changed. Dimitri haunted the deserted monastery, the ghost her students had feared made real and far more horrible than their imaginings. He craved revenge and, since that was out of reach, found what satisfaction he could in senseless violence. He threatened to kill Byleth almost every day and she believed that he'd follow through, eventually. He wouldn't be able to help himself. 

She'd have left if the other students hadn't arrived. But they did, one after another, older and sadder than before. The reunion gave them all hope--how could it not? This proof that friendship had endured against all odds, that the silly promise they'd made to one another hadn't been so silly after all. Most of her former students had believed Byleth and Dimitri to be dead and finding both of them alive and whole seemed like a miracle. 

Felix snapped at her like a terrier. Everywhere she went, there he was, nipping at her heels. "What happened to you?" he'd ask for the tenth, twentieth, hundredth time. He was relentless. "Where did you go?" 

She felt a new sympathy for the old Dimitri, stoically tolerating Felix's taunts. If the prince had been at all well, she'd have enjoyed a joke or two at Felix's expense.

But Dimitri was not well. And Felix was still not a terribly complicated man--it wasn't hard to see right through his anger to the fear simmering beneath, the anguish he couldn't confess. Sometimes, he'd crack. Just a little. "Couldn't you have said something? Sent a letter maybe?" Felix demanded once, hoarse and twitchy. "We organized a search. We kept at it for so long that, by the end, we had to admit we were looking for your body. Your _body_!" He threw up his hands. "And here you are! Alive!" 

***

After Rodrigue died, Felix retreated to his room. He snuck out late at night to poach food from the pantry and kept his door locked to all visitors. Byleth gave him a few days and then broke in through the window. 

He looked awful. Rumpled and unwashed and... dull. The sharp edge of his personality blunted, his vicious energy drained. No wonder he didn't want anyone to see him this way. For all his faults, Felix always seemed invincible. Reliable, ready, perfect. The man curled on his mattress in a dirty, stained shirt with half-eaten food overflowing his trash can was all too human.

"Go away," he said.

Byleth did not go away. 

"I don't want you here," he insisted.

Byleth made herself comfortable.

"Do you know how many times that _boar_ has taken my father from me?" he asked eventually. 

"How many?" she asked. 

"I should make a final count," he said. "Now it can't happen again." 

***

He emerged from his room eventually, flitting silently between the places where his father had spent the most time during his brief stay at Garreg Mach. Byleth had never once seen Felix speak to Rodrigue while the man was here, yet he knew exactly where his father had been.

And that was Felix in a nutshell, wasn't it? The key to understanding the rest. 

***

Dimitri returned to normal. Or some semblance of it--Byleth didn't think she would ever trust him again. Dimitri wanted to be the prince from a fairy tale, and he was. He really was. But he was also the monster from the tale. For the moment, the prince had vanquished the monster. But the end of every story was the beginning of another, and the monster would be back.

Still, the war went better without a madman at the helm. They advanced quickly and decisively toward Enbarr, gaining confidence as they progressed. By the time they reached the palace, victory seemed inevitable. If they'd toppled the Emperor's strongest fortresses, her most talented generals, what could she have left to defend the lush gardens and gilded halls of her home? 

Beasts, it turned out. And mages casting spells that made Byleth's skin crawl. She had seen such horrors since she'd arrived at Garreg Mach, but the creatures slithering around the Emperor's throne--the creature _on_ the throne--surpassed them all. Perhaps they really had come so far only to fail at the end. 

Dimitri struck out ahead, brave and foolish. The rest of them had no choice but to follow and hope for the best. Felix hovered at her side, launching himself at any foe who came near, striking them down before she could get a swing in. He was so _fast_. When, once, she was sure he'd taken on more than he could handle--three on one were bad odds no matter how talented you were--she went to his aid and they fought back to back. Better odds guaranteed a better outcome; in minutes they cleared the room.

"What is _wrong_ with you?" Felix snarled, grabbing her by the collar and hauling her close. "Did you _see_ that swordswoman? She would have had you--"

Byleth pressed her finger to his mouth and he fell completely silent. 

"It's not over yet," she said. 

"Don't you _dare_ risk yourself for me," he hissed. "For that boar if you have to. I know why we're here. But not for me." 

"I love you too," said Byleth. "But we're falling behind." 

His chest heaved. "I didn't say--"

Byleth bit her lips to contain a smile and hurried to catch up. Felix followed. He didn't leave her side. 

***

Afterwards, they were all too tired and shaken to be happy. It was the strangest night of Byleth's life, and she'd had more than her fair share of strange nights. She had changed the world and she didn't feel _anything_. Perhaps the relief would come later, and the joy and the pride. But the numbness seemed important, like a secret. The kind everyone was desperate to learn but no one was glad to have. 

Byleth ended up in the house of an Empire noble who'd been killed along the way. She didn't ask who. It was empty and quiet and comfortable and she wasn't in the mood to quibble about sleeping in the bed of a slain enemy. 

When she woke, Felix was in the room. He sat on a cushioned window seat and stared into the gardens, bright and fragrant in the southern summer, one leg crooked with the foot planted on the cushion, the other swinging loose. 

"Did you sleep at all?" Byleth asked. 

He shrugged. 

"Did you come here for a reason?" 

He faced her and... oh. _Oh_. He _had_ come here for a reason and she knew exactly what it was. He paced towards her, sinuous as a stalking cat, crawled across the bed and caged her with his limbs, pinning the sheets tight to her body and holding her immobile. His eyes glittered like polished copper between narrowed lids; he snagged her upper lip between his teeth and pulled. 

"Mine," he said simply. 

Byleth stifled a laugh. It would have been cruel--he was completely serious. Knowing Felix, it was probably the best declaration she'd get. 

He growled and bit her nose, gently, then dipped lower for a kiss. Slow at first, learning. Aggressive once he'd caught on. He peeled the sheets away, bunched them at the foot of the bed, and studied her body. It was a familiar look. They'd spent a lot of time together as _bodies_, watching one another move, attentive to small signals of intent. She'd fallen in love with the way he moved long before she'd fallen in love with _him_\--he was beauty in motion, fluid as water and precise as an arrow shot from Shamir's bow. 

He spread her legs, bent them, stared silently while stripping off his clothes. She let him. There was no sense in telling Felix to hurry. He'd proceed when he was ready and he wouldn't be ready until he could be perfect. 

His touch was clinical at first, exploring and prodding as his gaze flicked between her core and her face. When she tensed with pleasure, he caught it. Smiled sure and wicked as he shifted to lie atop her, lapping lazily at her breasts, dragging his teeth along the tendons of her neck, tugging at her ear. All the while his clever fingers worked at her clit, driving her to the brink. He entered her when she came, thrusting fast and shallow to drag out the orgasm, so deliberate she felt a chill skip down her spine and so good that she didn't care. 

Afterwards, when he rolled away to lie on his back and she found herself staring besottedly at the lean muscles bunching in his arms, the graceful stretch of his torso, she said, "At first, I was convinced that you weren't interested in sex." 

Felix shifted to his side and propped his head on his elbow. "And now you know you were wrong. What a relief for us both."

"Because of how you acted with those girls," she continued. "I never did figure it out. You didn't seem interested--and you're perfectly capable of saying 'no'--but maybe you felt like you _ought_ to want casual sex? So you did what you thought you were supposed to." 

Felix snorted. "Does that sound like me? Please." 

"Determined to live up to expectations I don't quite understand?" Byleth retorted. "A little." 

"No," he said. That was all. Just 'no'.

"Was it a ploy to get extra training? That was my other theory." 

"Extra _training_?" Felix barked a quick, harsh laugh. "If I wanted extra training I'd have _asked_. And picked a better time. I can't believe you think I'd--I've never heard anything so ridiculous in my life." 

"Then why?" 

"Because of you. Obviously." He touched the tip of his index finger to the notch between her collarbones and traced it lightly down, across her sternum to her belly button. "Because every time you caught me..." He dragged the finger back up to her nipple, pinched, then up again to flatten her lower lip. "You'd picture yourself in the girl's place. And I could see it. I could see you picturing it." 

"I did not!" Except she had. She definitely had. 

"You did," he snapped, low and harsh. "Every time. I never thought of you like that until I saw it in your eyes. It never _occurred_ to me. But once you showed me I couldn't think of anything else. Day and night, like a sickness. I made sure I got caught--to make you think it again--and then I'd picture you while I was fucking--and jerk off afterwards, remembering how you _looked_ at me." 

Byleth touched her chest, where her heart thudded wildly against her ribs. Frantic, panicked. Her cheeks were scorching hot. It had all been her fault. Dear goddess, she had crossed a line. "I am so sorry." 

"I was sorry when you _died_," Felix seethed, flipping onto his back again. "I was sorry when you came back and you hadn't been dead at all and you wouldn't tell me _what fucking happened_. I am not sorry about wanking myself raw thinking about you." He paused and then his tone thinned, grew brittle. "And you shouldn't be either." 

"It was wrong." She felt a little bit sick. And guilty. And now she'd slept with him? One of her former _students_? He still called her _Professor_ sometimes. "_I _was in the wrong."

Felix leapt out of bed and stalked from the room, naked and incandescent with rage. 

***

He ignored her all day. She tried to talk to him; he left the room. When she spoke to him in front of the others, he pretended he didn't hear. 

***

She moved to a hotel that night. She hadn't been in the mood to quibble about appropriating an unknown noble's bed in that odd, numb state that had taken hold after the battle with the Emperor. The morning after, however, she discovered that the gorgeous mansion belonged to House Bergliez and that she'd probably been sleeping in dead Caspar's dead father's bed. She'd had _sex_ in dead Caspar's dead father's bed.

With a former student. Grotesque.

So she moved. It was probably time to start making plans for the future--the reunion at Garreg Mach had reunited her class, the war had kept them together for a while, but they'd all scatter again. She'd missed the five years where she might have given thought to life beyond the monastery. Maybe she should go back to being a mercenary? The prospect didn't thrill, but it was a life she knew. It might make her feel closer to her father. If the Officer's Academy ever reopened, she'd ask for her job back. Though, all things considered, maybe she shouldn't. Maybe she wasn't fit to teach. 

The creak of a floorboard was her only warning before the sheets lifted and a warm body slid into the bed beside her. She didn't need to ask who; she only knew one person who could be so silent and so bold. 

Felix wrapped his naked arms around her, hugged her back against his front. His erection dug into her rump; his breath fluttered hot at her ear. 

"This is not wrong," he said, low and fierce. 

Byleth's throat tightened painfully. It didn't feel wrong to her either, but that didn't make it right.

"It's not," he insisted. "It's the best thing that's ever happened to me."

To her, too. Felix was so focused, so clear-eyed. He'd been her rock, without knowing or trying.

"And you'd ruin it because you had a few filthy thoughts?" Contempt thickened his tone. "How _noble_ of you. Sacrificing yourself--both of us--for nothing and no one."

She didn't want to argue. She didn't want to push him away, either; she liked him exactly where he was. But, "I have to live with myself."

"I thought you were dead. It took me five years to even _think_ about moving on and then you came back and now? You can't end this _now_." He smashed his nose into the back of her neck, his arms banding tighter around her ribs. "I won't let you." 

Something wet tickled her nape. Felix was crying? _Felix_? 

"I'm not..." She twisted 180 degrees and tucked Felix's head into the crook of her neck. To her surprise, he clung tight as a monkey. She had a hunch that no matter what she said next, starting tomorrow he'd deny that any of this ever happened. "What good would it do to separate? The damage is done."

Felix shuddered. He tried to swallow a rough, choking sob and failed.

"I just wish..." She sighed. "You deserved better." 

"You know what I _deserve_?" He rolled her onto her back, nudged her legs apart and settled between. Now that he'd gotten what he wanted, his confidence flooded back. He thrust his hips, rolled the hot ridge of his cock against her pubic bone. "This. Whenever I want. As much as I want. Maybe then we'll be even."

Byleth shifted in invitation and he took it, no hesitation. She gasped as he sank deep, thick and full inside of her. He nosed her cheek and kissed the spot where her jaw met her ear.

"I'll never get enough," he gloated. "We'll never be even." 

"I hope not," she teased--not teasing at all--as she rose to meet his next thrust. And then, because it was still true and because he needed to hear it, "I really do love you." 


End file.
